My husband and I intend to remortgage our apartment in Southwark with Co-operative. We have a son 19 who lives with us. Our solicitor has asked us to disclose any adults other than ourselves who lives in the flat. Our lawyer has now e-mailed a document for our son to sign, waiving any legal rights in the event that the apartment is repossessed. I have two questions (1) Is this document specific to the Co-operative conveyancing panel as he never had to sign this form when we bought 3 years ago (2) Does our son by signing this extinguish his entitlement to inherit the property?

First, rest assured that your Co-operative conveyancing panel solicitor is doing the right thing as it is established procedure for any occupier who is aged 17 or over to sign the necessary Consent Form, which is purely to state that any rights he has in the property are postponed and secondary to Co-operative. This is solely used to protect Co-operative if the property were re-possessed so that in such circumstances, your son would be legally obliged to leave. It does not impact your son’s right to inherit the apartment. Please note that if your son were to inherit and the mortgage in favour of Co-operative had not been discharged, he would be liable to take over the loan or pay it off, but other than that, there is nothing stopping him from keeping the property in accordance with your will or the rules of intestacy.

A friend recommended that if I am buying in Southwark I should ask my conveyancer to execute a Neighbourhood, Planning and Local Amenity Search. Can you explain what the purpose of this search is?

A search of this type is usually included in the estimate for your Southwark conveyancing searches. It is not a small document of more than thirty pages, listing and detailing significant information about Southwark around the property and the people living there. It includes an Aerial Photograph, Planning Applications, Land Use, Mobile Phone Masts, Rights of Way, the local Housing Market, Council Tax Banding, the demographics of People living in the area, the dominant type of Housing, the Average House Prices, Crime details, Local Education with maps and statistics, Local Amenities and other useful data about Southwark.

I'm buying my first flat in Southwark with the aid of help to buy. The builders refused to reduce the amount so I negotiated 6k of fixtures and fittings instead. The house builders rep suggested that I not inform my conveyancer about the deal as it would adversely affect my loan with the lender. Should I keep quiet?.

All lenders require a Disclosure of Incentives Form from the developer of any new build, converted or renovated property, It is available online from the Lenders’ Handbook page on the CML website. CML form is completed and handed to the lender's surveyor when the inspection is done.

Lenders have different policies on incentives. Some accept none at all, cash or physical, while others will accept cash incentives up to 5%.

Hard to understand why the representative of a builder would be suggesting you withold information from a solicitor when all this will be clearly visible on forms the builder has to supply to its solicitor, the buyer's solicitor and the surveyor.

Due to the input of my in-laws I had a survey completed on a house in Southwark prior to retaining lawyers. I have been advised that there is a flying freehold overhang to the property. Our surveyor has said that some banks may not issue a loan on such a home.

It varies from the lender to lender. Santander has different instructions for example to Halifax. Should you wish to telephone us we can check with the relevant lender. If you lender is happy to lend one our lawyers can help as they are used to dealing with flying freeholds in Southwark. Conveyancing can be more complicated and therefore you should check with your conveyancing solicitor in Southwark to see if the conveyancing will be more expensive.

We have AIP from Birmingham Midshires who said that they will loan up to £218k. When do I need to instruct a practitioner for conveyancing? Southwark is where we are .

You can instruct a lawyer now and ask them to create a file on your behalf. This will kickstart: 1) the estate agent to issue a Sales Memo to the relevant parties 2) the seller’s solicitor to send out the draft agreement. That being said, do not instruct your conveyancer to start searches until you have your valuation report from Birmingham Midshires and you are happy to move forward.